This invention pertains to real time usage of processing systems and more particularly to apparatus for measuring and visually displaying the amount of real time consumed by tasks of a processing system.
Current central office switching systems provide the ability to display the amount of real time utilized by the system. Systems such as, Traffic Service Positions System (TSPS), No. 2 EAX, GTD-3-EAS and GTD-4600 provide the ability to display the cumulative amount of real time utilized by the system. These systems are manufactured by GTE Communication Systems Corporation, which is the assignee of the present invention.
These systems and others provide for displaying only the total cumulative amount of real time used by the system or a certain predefined subset of these tasks. These systems do not permit selective displaying of relative percentage of different types of software tasks by the meter. Also, these systems do not provide the ability for displaying real time percentage sums of certain selected types of software tasks. For example, these systems do not provide the ability to display the amount of real time consumed by call processing and diagnostics cumulatively.
It is important for proper system performance to monitor the amount of real time used, which is beyond a predefined threshold limit. Previous methods to achieve this end have employed a system software monitor and to first, print a report or; second, to increment a counter for such an occurrence. The disadvantage of the first method is that the processing required to print a report also requires real time which detracts from the systems capability to perform its normal switching functions. Using the second method, incrementing a counter will provide an indication that the overshoot of the predetermined amount has occurred, but does not provide an instantly recognizable indication of it to the system's user. These systems do not address the problem of providing an instantaneous indication that a time overshoot exceeding a threshold level has occurred without consuming additional system real time.